BluesfestWhen Bluesfest’s site – the Byron Events Farm, 11km north of Byron Bay – went on the market last week, no price tag was immediately being offered.
But the NSW Value-General previously valued it at $7.14 million. One media report suggested it’s closer to $15 million these days.
The interesting thing about the sale is that the 118 hectare (291 acre) land can be bought via two options. One is as a whole package. The other is by buying one of three main parcels across six titles at 30 Tanner Lane, Tyagarah.
This opens the doors for the new owner(s) to come up with different uses.
North Coast Commercial Real Estate’s Chris Harley agreed, “There’s a lot of infrastructure there that could suit other uses. These types of properties tend to bring out buyers for things that you might not think of on a day-to-day basis.
“It could be commercial activity, events, private use, or a combination of those.”
Keep The Music Flowing
It makes perfect sense to keep it running as a festival ground. It had a capacity for 100,000 fans, and on-site camping for 6,000.
Owning the land and leasing it to the festival meant that its director, Peter Noble, could spend considerably on its infrastructure.
It included major drainage systems to handle heavy rains and flooding. A plus is the dedicated highway slip-lane to move patrons straight into the site from the M1 although it can be unpleasant during peak arrival times.
It comes with three homes, offices, an industrial shed, and the Green Room music venue.
The property is 15 minutes from Byron Bay. Access by air is through Ballina Byron Gateway Airport (30-minute drive), Gold Coast Airport (1.5 hours) and Brisbane Airport (2.5 hours).
The site doesn’t just host Bluesfest. In 2016, local council allowed extension of use, for 100 days up to 2,000 attendees, 10 days of events up to 15,000 and 10 days up to 25,000.
Byron Events Farm had an additional income. It lived up to its original name of Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm by continuing to be used as a functional tea tree plantation.
It’s not known how much it generated. But all the events on the site pumped $230 million to $272 million into the NSW economy during its purple period.
However it’s not a given that festival grounds continue to host tribal gatherings, even if the sale comes with stages, toilets, outhouses, and manager’s cottage.
The massive 229 hectare North Byron Parkland in Yelgun, NSW, home of Splendour and Byron’s Falls Festival and price-tagged at $35 million, only drew interest in being turned into a luxury private estate, wellness retreat or boutique eco development when it hit the market in 2025. It already had council approval to build a 120-person wellness retreat.
The one time dairy farm on Erskine Falls Road in Great Otway Park, home to Falls Lorne and its annual 15,000 attendance between 1993 and 2018, only had interest in possible use of hospitality, glamping, and accommodation.
The 88-hectare grounds initially asked for $4 million and reportedly went to $2.5 million after two years on the market.
Kings Beach on Sunshine Coast has not hosted a music festival since Caloundra Music Festival threw in the towel in 2024 after Sunshine Coast Council pulled the funding. It drew 33,000 punters when it started in 2019 but numbers dipped to 13,000 by 2022.
Many of the fields that ran bush doofs like Earthcore in the ‘90s and 2000s have returned to farm and grazing use.
Turn It Into A Bluesfest/Byron Museum
On part of what was Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in Bethal in upstate New York where the legendary Woodstock festival was held in 1969 stands the Bethal Woods Center.
When it came up for sale in 1997, multi-millionaire businessman and philanthropist Alan Gerry swooped in and set up a concert venue and a museum.
The museum is dedicated to the festival, as well as the 1960s ideals of love and peace that fuelled it. It is done through exhibitions and lectures, and class lessons to students.
Ironically, Yasgur was a conservative who supported the Vietnam War. But he was an idealist who wanted to shrink the generation gap.
It’s interesting that for allowing dirty hippies into their quiet neck of the woods (for a fee of $10,000), local farmers sent death threats and lawsuits to Yasgur, and even banned him from the local store. He sold the farm two years later, and moved to Florida where he died in 1973 of a heart attack aged 53.
In Victoria, the legacy of the Sunbury festival in the early ‘70s – held on George Duncan’s 600-acre sheep farm – is still kept alive by Hume City Council.
It holds regular exhibitions and talks in the local gallery, and in 2024 held a reunion concert accompanied by an on-site photo exhibition and clips of the festival. There are early discussions of a permanent legacy.
Similarly the Bluesfest museum could not only have a permanent display of videos and photos of the festival and its awesome legacy, and its message of music’s role of passion, healing, and celebration.
The narrative is already there. Over the years, it had everyone including Bob Dylan, BB King, James Brown, Midnight Oil, R.E.M., Van Morrison, The Wailers, Mavis Staples, John Butler, Crowded House, Kendrick Lamar, and Elvis Costello.
This writer did urge festival Director Peter Noble to put in a bid for three of The Rolling Stones to come and do just a blues set. Noble paled, explaining that their fee would probably equal that of the other top-billers.
Bluesfest’s importance also lay in how the team had the uncanny gift of finding acts on the brink of break-through.
These included the likes of Ben Harper, The Cat Empire, Jack Johnson, Gary Clarke Jr, Julia Stone, Missy Higgins, and the renaissance of Russell Morris. They created such a buzz among the 100,000 punters that it filtered through almost overnight to the rest of Australia.
Any museum could also take a wider look at the culture which it created and a wider look at the Byron Bay scene through the years.
It could also take a leaf from the X Building that INXS manager Chris Murphy was trying to get up and running in the local region before his death.
The X-shaped building, essentially a tech and social hub, was also to have an interactive room where visitors could find themselves in the audience at INXS’s famous Wembley show.
Become A House Of Wellness
Situated in Byron Bay, Byron Events Farm could easily slot in as a wellness retreat. There are already stand-outs in the region including Soma, Vibe, Gaia Retreat, and Elements.
Byron Wellness Festival held from November 27 to 29 has yoga, sound healing, breathwork, and cacao ceremonies during the day and entertainment from Boy & Bear, YAIMA, and Kim Churchill after sunset.
This is a significant move. Relaxation and entertainment are no longer considered separate.
A report on the Global Wellness Summit in Australasian Leisure Management Magazine showed a distinct trend of wellness treatment heading to the spirit of music festivals and after-dark raves.
In this so-called 'Festivalization of Wellness', the report pointed out, “Wellness is moving beyond the studio, clinic and retreat and becoming increasingly a lot more like a festival.
“The shift reflect(s) a broader move away from wellness built around measurement, optimisation and individual discipline towards experiences centred on joy, belonging, self-expression and collective participation.”
Sober morning dance parties and sauna raves with DJ sets and lights, are held without the excesses associated with nightlife but with the enjoyment shared with friends.
“Sauna and bathhouse venues are increasingly incorporating music and nightlife-style programming,” according to the report.
Build A Music Retirement Village
It is said that the entertainment industry’s crazy-all-hours, ambition, self-independence, and a set of values that is totally at odds with the rest of mundane society attracts a certain kind of personality.
They become musicians and songwriters, or behind the scene jobs working at record labels, producing, doing sound engineering & crewing, video making, publicity & marketing, and media.
As the early pioneers of the music industry hit retirement age and need more round-the-clock care, that doesn’t mean they want to end up in traditional retirement homes.
A number of associations have been looking at the need for unorthodox retreats where artists and execs can end up “with their own kind”.
Such places would be set up with recording and rehearsal studios, places for jam sessions, libraries, and areas where people at the end of their careers can pass on their skills and advice to those starting out on their journeys.
A good inspiration is Casa Verdi in Milan, Italy. Set up in 1899, it provides real life residencies for 60 retired opera singers, conductors and composers.
The opera royalties from classical composer Verdi covers rooms, board and medical treatment. It has 15 pianos, music rooms and concert theatres. Door keys are based on music notes.
Since 1991, nearby students pay a low rent to share meals with older musicians and seek guidance.
Byron Events Farm, or parts of it, could be such a place.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
